ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan | Hacker News Reader

ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan

freep.com

41 pointsericzawo35 comments

So the US homeland of Security set up a fake university, put it in the official accreditation website, and then arrest international students when they apply and join? WTH?

Yeah i think i'm reading that wrong, but it seems like the students are attempting to study in the country and applying to University through legal means, then getting deported as it's a fake university.

I'm clearly missing something here.

The "students" were enrolling in a university that had "had no teachers, classes, or educational services" as a means to game the F-1 visa program. Their goal was to falsely claim they were enrolled in education in order to avoid deportation.

It's not particularly clear at least from the website (which initially looks fairly legitimate, and has a .edu domain name) that there were no classes, and it does state that they offer F-1 visas.

It's possible that some of the students had transferred from other educational institutions and did indeed want to remain in the U.S. - it's a huge matter of prestige and hope for some families to send their children to the U.S. for education.

I'm sure there's some aspect of gaming going on with educational visas; what I'm not convinced about is whether setting up elaborate (and likely expensive) schemes like this -- which end up seeming a lot like entrapment, and risk criminalizing and punishing vulnerable individuals -- is the best way to approach handling the problem.

The article should probably have lead with that. ;)

This bit though, seems kind of sick:

> ... in some cases, students who transferred out from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested.

Sounds like they went after students who realised it was fake then transferred to a real Uni too. That's not good.

Presumably because by deporting them it becomes harder for the victims to get back the money they were defrauded out of.

That doesn't seem correct. Moreover a student has no means to determine if a University has no teachers, other than verifying relevant Government databases.

According to the article: Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate.

No, the students wanted to go to a US university - a reasonable thing to do, because US degrees are often more valuable than local ones.

So they went to the accreditation agency to get a list of universities to apply to.

They applied to those universities.

They got accepted by the fraudulent university.

The got their visas - after following all of the rules that they were meant to.

They arrived in the country.

They paid their fees to the university.

Once ICE got the money, they arrested all the victims of this fraud, and deported them so that it would become essentially impossible to get back the money ICE fraudulently stole from them.

What part of this is not

* fraud?

* entrapment

* theft

Especially now that the victims will have to check the “I have been deported from the US” box forever, and that alone is grounds to be rejected entry. So even if they do get the money ICE stole back, they are unlikely to ever be able to get a job for an American owned company, or that requires travel to America.

I want you to go through these steps and tell me which step taken by the victims was wrong, because you seem to be saying that the victims were committing fraud and it seems you must know something not in the article.

That's a valid argument, if it can be proven.

But, how could the students find that out before travelling and visiting the University?

It seems to me that many caught were acting on good faith.

> An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate.

Looks like that agency shouldn't be trusted anymore. Name and shame.

"While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."

But is there any evidence that they were told this before immigrating?

According to the article, some of the students arrested are students who transferred to other, legitimate universities once they found out there were no classes.

Isn't this entrapment? [0]

If so, any self-respecting judge should have allowed the students to stay or at least refund their money back plus some more...

[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/entrapment-basics-33...

There's more information on the background of the university on Wikipedia[0], and also archived copies of their website and admissions policy on the Internet Archive[1].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20170302161735/http://university...

> the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents

> which cost about $12,000 on average in tuition and fees per year.

> The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students.

Between that and half of the current US gov being corrupt to an unprecedented level I wonder were all the "A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free State" guys are. This is 1970s eastern europe level of power abuse.

The "well regulate militia" loves and supports Trump.

Lots of info in this interview: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/why-d...

Because a very small % of folks are prone to fraudulent behavior, this is actually a effective way to root it out.

Our tax dollars at work... It sickens me that the Federal Government is allowed to waste money on this type of things while there are people dying from a lack of access to insulin here in the the USA becasuse of the cost. Why not simply let people come and work here if they so choice and use the taxes we collect to support our failing education and social services system. #AbolishICE

Should American workers be happy to "simply let people come and work here" when their wages have been stagnant for decades? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

I dunno. We have so many things that are holding down wages right now, including globalization, automation, and changes to tax laws which make it easier for profits to go to capital instead of labor. Do we actually have good evidence that immigration has much of an effect?

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/04/541321716/fact-check-have-low...

https://www.nap.edu/read/23550/chapter/2

Border security is not casual racism. Nobody takes seriously a notion to stop having borders in a nation literally defined by them. While many actions of the current system are reprehensible, the response is reform, or even a clean-sheet design. But loss of sovergnity is not on the table.

Thank you, and well said. It bothers me when I get called a racist and a xenophobe for saying that border security is necessary, but the current admin has taken it too far. It's not black and white! We can't let everyone in. That just doesn't work - some security is necessary. Turning people away for vague reasons or race/country of origin when they otherwise would be let in is a whole other can of worms though.

You might want to learn about the country specific caps and how bills like S.386 were passed in congress buy blocked by Sen. Durbin to keep the "casual racism" going.

This is also the reason why people from India enroll in colleges that have weekend classes in order to maintain their legal status while in-between jobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6LGNijSCCc

Idealistically, it seems we could just let everyone do what they want, and it will all work out. As we're seeing over the last few years, this doesn't work.

Lobby to change the laws to whatever they "should" be, and enforce them. Personally I'm behind whatever Congress decides, but I'm very much not behind lawlessness.

I feel like they should have "safe harbor" provision where if student report fake universities on first being aware, they should be able to safely transfer to another university.

This can't be the best use of resources or money in our gov...

You can't argue that its not getting results, though.

I'm confused at how it's getting results. It seems that it is attracting students over from foreign countries then arresting them.

Or are these students people who were already in the US illegally?

Instead of DHS having to track down all these people in the US without visas, they tricked them to come get arrested.

What did that cost, a website?

That doesn't appear to be what happened. These students obtained entry to the US due to their acceptance to the college and then immigrated.

The article says that they received millions in tuition payments from these students so it sounds likely the program is at least partially self funding. In which case, this is a great use of government money.

Yes, it turns out theft by the government is very profitable when the government chooses not to charge itself with theft.

If such fake universities exist, why aren't these resources being spent to identity and shutter them instead? If they don't, why manufacture this elaborate heist instead of deporting the students in the first place when their visa ran out? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to just pore through immigration records and do some on-site checks to find a "real fake university" than to create one?

> but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents

Reply on news.ycombinator.com